My name is Jem Smith and I help small business to start and grow. I do this by enabling the entrepreneur to do what they do best (by doing some of the other things for them) and by being someone you can bounce ideas off of who can give you an honest opinion. This can, and has with various clients of mine, covered a huge variety of tasks. My strength is not training in a particular area of business but rather an ability to problem solve. There are a huge range of things you have to do to run a small business and they can all be done well (or well enough for now) with a bit of thought and trial and error.
I am based in London but can and have travelled around the country and do a lot of work remotely for my clients - you would be surprised, once we’ve had a face to face introductory meeting, how many problems I can help you with with a call and then my working for you remotely. Equally I am more than happy to come to you if that’s what you prefer.
See more about my background below and more about the services I offer and my rates here
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Jem worked with me from the beginning of my business just over six years ago, when it was just an idea we were discussing around my kitchen table, to where it is now - a group of nurseries and childminders with £3m a year in turnover, 6 (soon to be 7) sites and 100+ staff. While it was my idea and was and is entirely driven by my vision of what high quality childcare for working parents should be, at every step of the way Jem and I worked together to overcome the dozens of challenges that came up almost every week in setting up a business from scratch, with no practical experience, in a heavily regulated sector.
I would highly recommend Jem to other people looking to start their own business. He is supportive, imaginative, reliable, trustworthy, resourceful and hard working - and you always feel that he is on your side! We would not have got where we are now half as quickly without him, and I would not have kept my sanity half as well as I have!
Caroline Curtis, founder and owner of Lucky Beans Childcare Limited, London / www.luckybeasnchildcare.co.uk
Background
My journey to small business consultancy was a roundabout one - I needed some money to go to America after finishing my masters degree, so I began working with my mother to help her with running her psychological business consultancy. I rapidly found out that I loved problem solving - which is just as well as with a small business where there are only two of you there are new challenges almost every day!
I was doing other part time jobs as well for the next few years but then in 2015 I started looking for other clients like my mother, and over the next year started working with a residential landlord, a couple who were moving house, a business consultant who was developing a new organisational modelling tool (and writing a book) and finally a lady who wanted to set up as a childminder and then later open children’s nurseries. This last business really took off as the lady in question had a real ambition to grow the business and now (circa 2024) she has 7 nurseries, 300+ children and 100+ staff (and knowing her as I do, by the time you ready this all these figures could well be double).
Working with a business which expanded so rapidly was a huge challenge (until we opened the 3rd nursery there was only myself and her doing the business and administration side of things), particularly in terms of being a dynamic start up business in a heavily regulated sector. It was a bit too much for one man in the end so I agreed with the founder to step back from the day to day running of the business and be more of an occasional strategic advisor, while she hired dedicated people for marketing, admin, finance and so on.
While this was a heart rending moment for me - other people taking over the running of the business I’d put so much work into - it was also a fantastic moment. With a turnover of £1m a year at that point she was in a position to bring in specialists in those fields to take the running of the business to the next level. We had succeeded.
Jem has worked with me for nearly 10 years and in that time he has proved an invaluable help with my business. While he has mainly been responsible for public courses, conference exhibitions and setting up and running the online store that he developed as an adjunct to my consulting business, he has helped me out with many other aspects of the business over the years as I have asked. He has a real talent for quickly and inventively thinking up ways of overcoming the many obstacles that pop up in running your own business.
I value him for not just for this, although having someone to bounce ideas off and to leave to complete a task with minimal oversight is very valuable, but also for his happiness to take over and complete competently routine administrative tasks that free up my time to plan and deliver my consultancy. He will always try to help with whatever is causing me stress and worry and I would really recommend his services to anyone in my position.
/ SARAH LEWIS, FOUNDER AND OWNER OF APPRECIATING CHANGE, LONDON / WWW.ACUKLTD.COM and the positive psychology shop, london / www.thepositivepsychologyshop.com
Experience/Qualifications
As I say my pitch to you is as a problem solver and as someone who with a bit of thought, research and trial and error can usually find a good way of doing something, rather than as an expert in any particular aspect of business, although for the record I hold a BA in Economics and an MSc in Development Economics from Sheffield University.
The good news for you though is that I have already had to solve many admin, finance, payroll, recruitment, marketing, IT and CRM problems and so I may know, or have a good idea for, the answer to whatever you are thinking about or struggling with - which will save you some money!
My experience working with small business so far includes:
Appreciating Change
organisational psychology consultancy
2006 – present
My client had run this consultancy for many years and engaged me to help with her web presence, to help her develop and produce products related to her consultancy work and sell them online, and to run events.
Experience gained in
Online commerce, including:
Building an online store
Marketing
Payment and order processing
Shipping
Co-ordinating product design, development and production
Conference exhibition retail (selling products at relevant trade shows):
Analysing stand positioning, footfall, traffic flow etc
Coordinating stand materials (promotional items, CRM procedures, payment systems, roller banners, stand dressing etc)
Travel coordination and stock logistics
Income generation via invoicing, POS (Point of Sale, i.e. card machines) and cash sales
Running training courses, including:
Researching and booking venues
Marketing places
Processing bookings
Planning the event
Website design using Squarespace templates
Income generation via invoicing
Event management
organisational Consultant
2016 - 2017
This man is a successful organisational consultant who was looking to implement a new model that he and his partner, also a consultant, had developed for analysing the strengths of leaders in organisations through an online questionnaire and interviews. The leader would then receive a repot. The organisational consultant would use the reports as the basis for his mentoring/coaching of the leader.
For me this involved extracting the data from the online questionnaire replies, putting it into a highly complex analytical spreadsheet and then extracting the result and putting them into the report template to create individualised reports.
Experience gained in
Managing a highly complex excel database to produce meaningful results
Lucky Beans Childcare
Childcare provider
2016 - present
I worked with the client from the inception of the idea to the present, where at the tie of writing (2019), it is a business with a turnover of £1m a year. I was involved in everything except the actual delivery of the childcare.
Experience gained in
Staff Recruitment, including:
Writing job listings
Posting and managing screening
Interviews and hire recommendation
Staff Management of head office staff, including:
Induction
Mentoring
Supervision
Role and duties handovers
CRM
Marketing, including:
Market research
Analysing best return for investment approach
Writing marketing copy
Regulatory compliance
Creating staff training materials
Staff rota
File management
Calculating and invoicing fees, building and administering system
Payroll, building and administrating system
Creating management accounts and financial projection
Cashflow management
Negotiating with landlords
Business development/strategy
Document design/copy writing
Writing business plans
Residential Landlord
2015 – 2018
I was asked by a lady who owned several residential properties to take over the legwork of managing the properties.
Experience gained in
Arranging tradesmen visits
Coordinating repairs and improvements
Conducting inventory inspections
Purchasing and arranging delivery of appliances
Managing tenants
Jem helped me and my partner with a large analytical challenge. We were building a business selling individual reports and the supporting one to one reviews to organisation, based on an analysis of data their members submitted online. We both had other jobs though so we needed someone reliable and intelligent to take the survey data, select what needed to go into the excel model where and then be able to interpret the resulting outputs and put them into the template report to create the individualised reports.
This was very tricky in that the spreadsheet was quite large and complex with dozens of inputs and outputs (which all needed to make sense for the final reports), but Jem handled it excellently, with a minimum of supervision.
It was a real weight off my mind and freed up my time to sell the programme and do my day job. I would recommend him to other people in my position who need some irregular or one off help with a part of their small business in the 'back office' (even if you don't have an office!).
David Lewis, entrepreneur, London